The Bose QuietComfort Ultra the headphones came out about a year ago, and now Amazon is selling the Lunar Blue color for $329, which is $100 off MSRP (other colors are full price). We saw this price for all four colors during Amazon’s fall sale last week. Lunar Blue looks like a limited editionit could account for the discount, or it could just be Amazon’s way of firing up the deal engines after the end of October.
Bose
This is a return to an all-time low price for Bose’s advanced noise-canceling headphones.
Engadget’s Billy Steele reviewed these when they came out last October, giving them a respectable 86 awards. The difference between this Ultra version and Bose’s standard QuietComfort headphones is the integration of Bose’s version of spatial audio.
The design has also seen some changes, with one multifunction control instead of three buttons to control playback and mode functions. There is also a touch bar to adjust the volume. Some of the plastic has been swapped out in favor of metal, and we found comfort to be at the same high level as previous Bose boxes – especially for long listening sessions. And of course, the active noise cancellation is still one of the best you can get.
As for Immersive Sound (the flagship feature), it’s good sometimes. It works with all content – not just content created to support it, like Dolby Atmos in Apple Music or Sony’s 360 Reality Audio. But because it relies on signal processing instead of custom-made sounds, the results vary. Sometimes it sounds great, sometimes not so much. But thankfully, Bose has improved the sound all around, so even without the new feature, the sound is warmer and clearer than the standard QCs.
in our guide to best wireless headphoneswe’re talking about the QuietComfort Ultra, but note that there’s a $100 price jump standard QCs (our current ANC option) is not worth it because the success of spatial audio is not consistent. But with this discount, the blue QC Ultra headphones are currently $20 cheaper than the originals. It might be a good day to go for the price/non-price version.
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